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Changes could be coming to how Shaders work in Destiny 2

After months of fan unrest, Bungie has finally acknowledged player complaints about how shaders work in Destiny 2.

At the end of this week's This Week at Bungie blog post, a section devoted entirely to shaders confirmed that changes to the system are "on the workbench" at Bungie, with some possible solutions pitched.

Shaders work way differently in Destiny 2 than they did in Destiny 1. In D1, shaders had unlimited usage and could be applied to completely change the color of a Guardian's entire armor set. In D2, they became one-time use consumables that could be applied to each individual piece of armor, as well as ships, Ghosts, Sparrows, and weapons. These shaders have been added to the in-game Eververse store loot table, too.

As players have accrued a number of shaders, an issue has popped up where you can only delete one at a time as opposed to an entire stack. This creates a tedious situation where you need to hold down a button and delete a stack of 100+ shaders one by one.

"Shaders are individual items, and individual items trigger individual reward bundles when dismantled, even when those rewards are simple," said senior design lead Tyson Green. "That creates a challenge for us that we haven’t yet addressed, which is triggering dozens (or hundreds) of reward bundles simultaneously when an entire stack of shaders is dismantled. This is challenging not simply because an arbitrary number of rewards need to be run and delivered simultaneously, but because we also have to safeguard against scenarios where this produced items that couldn’t fit in your inventory, which could be instantly lost."

Green says that it would be easy to find another button combination to delete a full stack, but that "isn't the spirit of what players are asking for," so Bungie is looking for a stronger solution.

Bungie agrees that it should be easier to get rid of a stack of shaders and it is looking at solutions. It also acknowledged that they know players miss the Destiny 1 armor shader mechanics, and the developer is looking at ways to re-integrate that capability without losing the ability to shade individual items like weapons and Ghosts. On top of that, Bungie also wants to re-introduce shader collections or a way to get copies of shaders that players already own.

"This work is ongoing, and we’ll go on record as to when the solution will land as we get closer to a fix that we test and certify," said Green. "For now, it was important to us that you know it’s on our workbench."